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Dis Solutia

The U.S. EPA and the Department of Justice plan to file a cleanup consent decree today with Solutia and Pharmacia (the company that owns Monsanto), in a move that could overrule any court-ordered cleanup of PCBs from a former Monsanto chemical plant in Anniston, Ala. Under the decree, the two companies would investigate the scope […]

Quit Being Modest

Enviros chalked up a small victory yesterday when the U.S. Senate threw its support behind a measure requiring that investor-owned utilities produce at least 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The Senate did so by rejecting, 58 to 40, an attempt by Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to remove the requirement from […]

Track Stars

U.S. Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Harry Reid (Nev.) yesterday proposed creating a national tracking system to monitor both chronic diseases and environmental pollution so that any correlations between the two could be more easily identified and studied. Last year, the two senators held hearings in Fallon, Nev., which is home to a cluster […]

Appliance of My Eye

Meanwhile, drought conditions in parts of the U.S. are driving up sales of water-efficient toilets, faucets, laundry machines, dishwashers, and other appliances. Home Depot and Sears are among the companies benefiting from consumers’ itch to shift away from water guzzlers. Sears spokesperson Larry Costello said water- and energy-efficient appliances now represent 17 percent of the […]

No Absurd Headline Necessary

The U.S. Department of Energy is preparing to claim that Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force did all it could to involve environmental groups in planning the Bush administration’s energy plan. Last month, a federal court ruled in favor of the Natural Resources Defense Council and ordered the department to release as many as […]

On the Water Front

More than 2.7 billion people will experience severe water shortages by 2025 if the world continues to consume water at the current rate, according to a U.N. report released today, which happens to be World Water Day. The report goes on to say that another 2.5 billion may be living in areas where it will […]

Living Worse Daily

In 1986, it rained for three weeks straight in Midland, Mich., headquarters of Dow Chemical Corp. A wastewater containment facility at a Dow plant on the banks of the Tittabawassee River overflowed, and waste from the plant was carried downstream into the Saginaw flood plain. In 1995, Michigan began finding elevated levels of dioxins — […]

Not-So-Super Power

Amid heated controversy over the Bush administration’s plans to weaken air pollution regulations, two environmental organizations and a large New Jersey utility are releasing today a new study ranking the worst polluters in the power industry. The study, “Benchmarking Air Emissions of the 100 Largest Electric Generation Owners in the U.S. — 2000,” tracked company […]

Get the Lead Out

Residents of northern Idaho are fiercely resisting a plan by the U.S. EPA to expand a 21-square-mile area into one of the country’s largest Superfund sites. That’s not so unusual — many towns resist Superfund designation, fearing that the stigma will drive away tourists and businesses. But some northern Idaho towns have filed a lawsuit […]

I Sing the Garbage Electric

Maybe President Bush can learn a thing or two about environmental policy during his visit today to Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city and home to an innovative program to turn rotting garbage into electricity. The city government is working with a local energy company to construct an electricity plant at the Salinas Victoria Landfill; the plant […]